My (probably not-so) Mini-Review of Liberty's 5/27/18 Sailing

[OSUZorba]

First, let me say every time I get back from a cruise I try to write a mini-review, end up getting very long winded and abandon the cause before I post anything. I am going to attempt again. I'm going to post in a random order, and will probably skip pictures since there are already a ton of pictures of Liberty out there.

 

This is our 10th cruise, 3rd on Liberty in the last 18 months. The cruise was supposed to be Galveston - Cozumel - Grand Cayman - Falmouth, Jamaica - Galveston. Our last two cruises on Liberty were in JSes with our DD (at 7 mo and again at 19 mo), but this cruise was in a Balcony (9330) with just DW, DD stayed with the grandparents.

 

We really enjoyed this cruise and Liberty is still our favorite ship, my only complaints are very small and none we a big deal.

 

Cabin:

Cabin 9330 is medium purple room (2D I think? I really hate the new deck plans) and is the first room on the forward side of the aft hump. I personally love being on the hump and paid an extra $250 to just barely be on the hump (it was the only hump room left on the ship when I booked 5 weeks out). The location is great, especially since we only use the stairs, deck 9 is a great location. Even though it was the first room on the hump, you could still see the side of ship at the waterline and could look straight down without any obstructions.

 

The room had the full size sofa and was in good repair. I only have two complaints. One that cabin got hot every night from about 11 pm to 3 am, very annoying. The other, I think there must be a sewer main between the cabin and the hallway, because the bathroom basically had non-stop loud flushing sounds all day. We were roughly under the women's bathroom room on deck 11, so pretty busy sewer system. It was pretty annoying in the bathroom, but I barely ever noticed it in the main part of the cabin, so not a huge deal. My wife didn't think the cabin was as clean as others we had been in, but I had no complaints there.

 

The cabin steward was the least friendly one we've had since 2010. She wasn't rude, but she had no interest in being friendly either. She also skipped turn down the first night. Overall, she did her job, but I'd definitely rank her on the bottom of stewards I've had.

 

The Port:

We parked at 'Indoor Cruise Parking' which is a great facility. It is an old warehouse so cars are inside and there is a ton of room around the cars, so no door dings and plenty of room to get luggage in and out. They have raised their prices since since last October, but still worth it IMHO. This time it took us about 30 minutes to actually get inside, never been a problem before but know that it can be an issue, I think the problem is how close the exit is to the traffic light and the light is very short. The shuttle service is always quick to get you to the port, but if you are late off the ship it can be a wait. Luckily we walked right on to a bus when we got off.

 

I think the terminal itself has to be the worst laid out terminal I've ever been in. First everyone enters by terminal 1, and have to drive past all of their traffic to get over to terminal 2, which really slows down the shuttles and creates traffic issues on harbor side drive (I believe even pedestrians have to go this way as well).

 

Once off the bus, there are never porters waiting to take your bags. This time there was a huge mass of people waiting to drop off bags. In the past they would just have you create massive stacks in a room, but they weren't doing that this time. This time they were bringing out one or two hotel luggage carts at a time, extremely slow. Finally they brought out the actual ship carts and the line started moving faster. Getting baggage to porters has literally never been a problem for me at any other port, but has been annoying all three times for us in Galveston.

 

The other really dumb design decision is the baggage drop off point and terminal entrance points are on opposite ends of the building and you have to cross the exit, so you have a mixing of departing and arriving passengers that creates traffic jams.

 

Thankfully once inside things went smoother. C&A Platinums and up, plus suites all get priority access through security. My first time on Liberty in 10/16 the priority line was ran very poorly, but this time it was ran very well. As an Emerald level I was able to bypass the vast majority of the security queue, saving probably 40 minutes.

 

Once through security check in was pretty straight forward and quick. Here it might pay to be emerald, they had Diamond, Suite and Pinnacle were in one line, while Emerald had their own, but they alternated one party from each line when an agent opened up. This is also much better than it was on my first cruise out of Galveston. The non-C&A side had a ton of people, but also had a lot of agents.

 

Overall, we got to the parking lot around 9:45 and got upstairs around 11:31. We had to wait to board because the previous cruise's disembarkation was delayed about 90 minutes because they couldn't find a person of interest for customs. We got on the ship at 12:18, and they did a good job of controlling priority access.

 

Disembarkation went much much much smoother than our cruise in 10/17, and they actually followed their stated procedures. We self carried, we started disembarking at 7:46am and we were through customs 8:20. However, we got in line at 7:10, people getting in line at 7:40 were pretty far back. We were exiting the parking lot at 8:35. (In October we lined up around 7:30 and didn't get through customs until after 9:30 and it was massive CF)

 

All in all, the terminal is annoying, but it is a tiny percentage of the cruise and I'm over the annoyance once it is over.

[OSUZorba]

Non-MDR Food:

I don't know if it is fleet wide or just Liberty, but I think the Wind Jammer has really upped their game on our last three cruises. Although still repetitive in broad terms, the chicken and carved meat is different every day. They've had more desert options and change most of the other options daily. Overall I'd say the quality of the food is much improved over all my other non-Liberty RCL cruises (but still not up to Disney's standards). The only complaint is they don't have turkey patties for burgers.

 

The pizza was not as terrible as I remember if from other cruises, but that seems to be hit or miss. I did find out in the all access tour that they do use frozen crusts. I think they might accidentally be using the cardboard backer instead of the crust itself. Sorrentos did have some decent looking other options and had different deserts than the Cafe.

 

Probably my favorite change to the ship was in the Cafe, where they added an ice machine. The Ice Machine was very nice. They changed the presentation a little in the Cafe, but I don't think it made much of a difference or if anything slowed them down. The desert rotation was pretty weak, which is a common complaint on all of my Liberty cruises (although, the 10/16 cruise was by far the worst).

 

Ever since someone on here clued me on the fact the deck "ice cream" is actually desk "Frozen Corn Syrup and Water" I refuse to eat it, but there were long lines at the machines all week and they seemed to be having problems with them on and off.

 

 

For some reason DW always want to go to JR, so we went the first seaday. When they told us the cover charge was now $12, we said never mind. They seemed pretty dead most of the week to me. But why would anyone pay $12 for JR when you can get basically the same thing in the WJ for free or go to Giovanni's at lunch for $15.

 

 

MDR:

This is my first cruise with the new menus. The new menus seem to have all the same entrees as the old menus, but in a different order. They seem to have completely given up on desserts, most nights only had one unique option. They also now get your dessert order at the start of the meal, which helped move dinner along. Overall, I prefer the old menus.

 

I got two entrees every night and I was very happy with all of my food, except one night I got the Salmon and it was well overcooked. Probably the best overall food quality I've had in MDR, at least in quite a while. Some things that were missing, no more sherbet (my waiter asked them to make me Orange Sherbet and they told him they didn't have the stuff), savory bites, Italian rolls, spinach artichoke dip, etc.

 

The also changed the bread format, now they just give you a basket of bread. This leads to a ton of waste and you not really getting what you want, but I am sure it allowed them to get rid of a few more assistant waiters.

 

Our main waiter, Amit, was very good. The assistant Made was also better than average, but I think he had too many tables (more than the main waiter).

 

Overall I was very happy with the MDR.

 

I'll write up some more tomorrow.

Edited June 5, 2018 by OSUZorba

[scorpluvsdolphins]

I totally get the problems with the port. Only did 2 cruises B2B. I get free cruises, but nope. The hassle to fly or drive 19 hours is a no for me. When I disembarked it was a CF.

I through my arm in the air and yelled porter. My bags weren't even in the same numbered area.

The luggage was all over the place.

The porter and I spent over 10 mins trying to locate my dive bag.

I'm glad it is a little better now.

 

 

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